I like to read around in the sciences, everything
from Edwin Way Teale and Rachel Carson to Richard Feynman, and early alchemical
and medical books. My interest in natural history evolved through a series
of courses I took years ago at Morton Arboretum outside Chicago, an interest
revitalized by my younger sister’s botanical art works. The visual aspects
of scientific studies influences me as much as the textual.

Thanks to Aufgabe for first publication of
“Thirty Three Articles...” and American Letters & Commentary
for “A gradual disappearance...

That nothing happens by chance, but all things occur
from
necessity, even though necessity is difficult to admit.

She poured ice water from the pitcher into the
glass and noticed the pleasing
sound of the glass becoming full.

There are several firelit worlds and our insistence
on one tells us more about our selves than the universe.

There was a window in the room, but opening was
not allowed.

That the cause of a new act [or thing], or something
new produced depends on if
you are standing barefoot or wearing shoes, and who does the lifting.

That the table on which you set your glass, which sits in the direct
line of the sun,
can be turned.

A potentially hazardous solar flare leapt from
the sun Thursday. Some suggest
the planet is overdue for another one.

At the time of the solar maximum, if left out all
day, the feather will fill with dirt
and wind. Across the film it will leave a speckled line.

When you write, speckled line, you curve the letters,
and squinting, see sun spots.

We said we felt no consequences from the solar
flares, as the tides rose and the
rivers fell back, and the drought came upon our flesh. When the itching
began,
we envisioned grasshoppers. When the wounds broke open, we saw worms.

The bird had fallen and someone recorded it a book
about West Nile, another bird
fell and was counted. In the grass, we found the bloody feathers.

There was water in the glass, but it couldn’t be
drunk.

She stood up and went to the window. She could
feel the cold of the glass
against her cheek, even though the sky appeared to be bright.

The poles of the sun’s magnetic field have apparently
reversed.

Several powerful solar salvos are heading toward
earth where they could cause
another round of dazzling auroras and disrupt radio communications.

We watched her stand there, wondering what she
could have been thinking.

Suffocation was a single word intended, but unspoken,
left out for someone to
guess. Suffocation was the presumption there was one single answer,
an answer
at all. It was an infinite question that held no water.

A shadow emerged from the glass as shadows spontaneously
generate from
objects immersed in light.

We watched the water rings evaporate on the surface
of the table.

At the peak of an eleven-year cycle of activity,
the sun has become increasingly stormy. Prisms are born from fragrant
thunderstorms.

Sun’s storms may or may not cause lightning in
the southern hemisphere of the
brain, static behind the eyes, hence, sun stroke. Storms have intensified
nighttime aurora light shows.

She appeared to disappear into a blinding glare.
Someone spoke about taking a
photograph.

There was so much sunlight; we were composed of
shadow.

When she left the room, we had the impression she
remained somehow, both
leaving the room and remaining, as thought the dust particles illuminated
by the
sun’s rays contained the inner workings of her ears. They danced
around us,
perhaps recording our words on infinitesimal microchips.

To look back is to romanticize, to comb the mind
with honey. The honeyed sun
attracts bees to its warm hive.

The paper was exposed and the comb’s white teeth
bled against dark blue. The
sun will cause an object to change into its opposite, it will cause
blue glass to
crack.

To look forward is to fantasize, to invent phantoms
where those who walk on the
other side of the sun have not yet been followed.

She places green tea in a cup, and takes it outside, along with branches,
a torn piece of a
brown bag, a coin, a photograph of a bat. She is not afraid to like Tennyson.

The neurons begin a slow repair, stretching, then folding into exhaustion.

Her fingers understand what it is to tease song from paper. She makes
a crease in the page
with the edge of a ruler.

Somewhere in the western states, an enormous meteor fell to the earth
with such enthusiasm
it created an immense crater. Permanent is a word.

Optical Phenomena

All night we taunt the neighbors with our voices
exclaiming marias
moon a reflection upon mirrors
Copernicus, Kepler, Herodotus
what keeps us revolving when we’re ready to jump off?
six of us
shivering, gawking
until simple mathematics
argues arpeggios, crystals of dehydrated Borax
inside even ourselves
what we thought
Venus is Jupiter
four moons stretched into infinity
visible through contortion, reversal
imagine Tycho Brahe
solar plexus against the moon’s surface
the indenture in gray matter
a philosopher’s stone
lingering after doubt

Bio: Catherine Kasper has been the recent
recipient a Writer’s League of Texas Fellowship. Blueprints of the
City, a prose poem series was published as a chapbook (Transparent
Tiger Press, 2000), and her chapter on poetics is published in the
anthology Vectors: New Poetics (Samizdat Editions). Her poetry
is forthcoming in the anthology Of Tangible Knowledge: Poetic Investigations
in the Sciences and in journals such as Aufgabe, Notre Dame
Review, McSweeney’s and on Web del Sol and Drunken
Boat websites. She is presently an Assistant Professor of Creative
Writing and Literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio.